How to recover your iPhone call history

If you’re looking for a way to recover call history from your iPhone, you’ve come to the right place. In this article we’ll describe how to recover call history from an iCloud or iTunes backup. Recovery of call history data includes data from any "CallKit" compliant app, you when you get this data, you'll also see any calls you've made with FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype, or any other VoIP application, all neatly categorised. Hurrah! 👍

The call history on your device is backed up once you connect your iPhone to iCloud over Wi-Fi, or when you generate an iTunes backup.

If you only want to retrieve your call history, please note that you shouldn’t restore a full backup to your iPhone, as this would remove the records created after the moment that backup was taken.

Where does the call history data come from?

If you don’t already have an iTunes backup, you can generate it in a few minutes using your computer and iTunes, which is free from Apple. When you run our software, it'll show you immediately whether you have an iTunes backup.

Alternately, you can create an iCloud backup easily enough, too. To do this, go to Settings → iCloud → Backup. If "iCloud Backup" is "on", below you’ll see the date of your last backup. Don’t click "Backup now" button if you don’t want to overwrite your backup.

If you have an iCloud backup, you should be able to get back your call history with iPhone Backup Extractor. Before doing this, verify that your iPhone will not overwrite your most recent backup. For this, make sure your phone is not charging or USB connected. Normally iCloud backups are created automatically when the iPhone is Wi-Fi connected to the Internet, locked or plugged into a power source.

Once you've determined whether to retrieve your entire call history (including the deleted ones!) from iTunes or iCloud, you can follow these steps to get your call history back:

Step 2.* If you're recovering from iCloud, click on the + button (or the "Click here to add an iCloud account") on the left-hand side of the app, then enter your iCloud credentials to add your iCloud account.

If you're recovering from an iTunes backup, you'll see iPhone Backup Extractor will automatically the ones stored in iTunes' default backup folder.

If your backup isn't in the default folder (it should be so long as you haven't moved it!), you'll need to add by clicking the + button or the "Click here to learn more". That'll guide you through the process.

Adding iCloud or additional iTunes backups

Step 3. Select your backup on the left of the app and click on "Extract Call history”, then select the location where you want to save the .csv file containing the call history. The extraction will take just a few seconds.

Once the data is extracted, open the CSV file with your inbound and the outbound calls.

It's easy to extract your call history...

Other approaches

There are two other alternatives for extracting the call history information from an iTunes backup: click on “App View”, then “Apple Phone” and select “All calls”; or choose the “Extract” option found in the top menu, then select “Call history as CSV” and choose the location where the file will be extracted.

Alternately, it's also really easy to preview your call history without extracting it. Just hit the "Preview" tab, then scroll to "Call history". As below:

Previewing call history from an iTunes or iCloud backup

Did you follow our step by step guide for recovering the call history from your iPhone? Did it help you? In case you need additional details, don’t hesitate to contact our support team. We'd love to hear from you!

About the author

Alexandra Petruș served as Reincubate's VP of Product for a number of years and remains a friend of the company. She's recognised as a Google Developer Expert for Product Strategy, and is a co-founder of Bucharest AI.

Pictured above are members of Reincubate’s team meeting HM Queen Elizabeth Ⅱ at Buckingham Palace, after being awarded the UK’s highest business award for our work with Apple technology. Read our position on privacy, safety and security.

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